Hermes, ruler of the world, dweller in the heart, circle of
the moon,
Round and square, inventor of the words of the tongue,
Obedient to justice, wearer of the chlamys, shod in winged sandals,
Guardian of the many-sounding tongue, prophet to mortals.

---- A Magic Papyrus *Preisendanz,
II, p.139.

The verse above was taken from
opposite page 193, which is the beginning of the chapter entitled: "The Spirit
In The Bottle", in the book Alchemical Studies by Dr. Carl G. Jung.
Bollingen Series, Princeton, 1967.

~

Long ago, somewhere near the edge of a pre-primordial village, an old
alchemist pumped his billows at the crucible of his work. During his long night
of work he added bits of metal and mineral to a coarse glob of fire-married
formulations, heating the elements of the only world he saw, stirring them
together as his fire brought them slowly to melt. He then would allow them to
cool and become solid once again. Pitching in a pinch of yet another element, he
would fire the crucible over again until the mass was a molten bubble of liquid
metal. It was then that he could stir his metallic formula with charcoal,
stirring slowly as one might stir one's soup.

He made signs with the movements of his stirring, tracing invisible
geometries as he directed the charcoal rod through the molten, heavy liquid. He
muttered, at times, several phrases which he had learned from a previous
alchemist, long dead.

Leaning over his work, the old brow shed a bead of sweat from time to time,
which hissed upon hitting the crucible's fiery orb.

It was not for lack of discernment that the old alchemist permitted his sweat
to fall upon his heated work. Rather, it was his intent. He knew that a human
salt was carried in his sweat as it beaded on his brow and fell into his fire.
He had many kinds of salts, as well as chemicals and compounds, organic and
mineral powders and pastes. His formula was extensive in his later years,
requiring combinations of many things. But one of his constants, a variable he
never varied, was his inclusion of this human salt. He had even entered it into
his notes, which would only be seen by one man, that being his apprentice, the
vessel through which would pass his formula.

Speaking of "human", the alchemystical tradition yields to a casual study the
marked contrast of the two approaches to the science. One approach to alchemy,
the oldest, secured within it's mysterious symbolisms a profile of the
enlightenment of the soul from base birth to spiritual transcendence. To this
sort of alchemist, the metals and ingredients of his formula were symbolic. That
sort of alchemist acquainted himself with figurative concepts. The tree, the
well, the field, it's bird above the lea and playful fox, the farther wood and
then a sea. Such things as bear greater than spectrums seem.

Not all sandals show their wings. Magic inmixed, chakraic alignment, spun
apex of a coiled spring, meteor trails in stardust. Things such as hath not to
do with proxy perception. Archetypal energies lurking at the peripheries of the
mind's grasp. The mystical in practice.

This eccentric old alchemist was crazy, and the village people all knew it.
They could plainly see he had no gold, and was therefore worthless. He slept and
worked a short way down the trail from the village wall, but he would, rarely,
enter the village if he had reason.

However, in time there came a second sort of alchemist, and his mood was one
of materiality. Having heard from a distance that the goal of alchemy was the
transmutation of base lead into gold, and perceiving the utilitarian marvel of
such a thought, any insensitive man might set about to make himself wealthy by
making gold at home. As we might surmise, such men were small, and have been
overlooked by history, excepting that they inadvertinently gave to mankind the
science of chemistry. (Good gift gone bad, eh?) Their motive, however, seems to
have spread infectuously into the society of man, and even today greed remains
an ingredient of our world. Still, none can claim success in that approach to
Alchemy. Not one of the self-professed alchemists has made a grain of gold from
lead.

But our old alchemist understood a higher origin of the tradition of Alchemy.
A tradition to which he could trace points previous to Atlantis, and elaborate
upon the shifts of shapes in the tradition's evolution.

He sought the "aurum non vulgi", the natural symbol of the enlightened soul.
He labored long, as he had for many nights in his eccentric life.

He was seen to be a fool by the village which tolerated, just barely, his
life.

He, and the village at which he lived, perished in time each and each.

Some centuries ambled by.

Each and each, the alchemist and the village reappeared in time.

Of the two, only the alchemist understood their true relationship with each
other; only he knew of their previous relationship. He had become a thinker of
philosophy, but, owing to there being only one of him while the village had the
many, the village, in traversing the centuries of non-existence, had upon
its reappearance, become a corporate entity.

Awakening to the presence in his forest of this corporate entity, the
alchemist tolerated the corporate entity for half a century, observing it
patiently.

Knowing inherently that this corporate entity was but a new facade for an old village,
even so as he himself was a new facade for an old Alchemist, he
waited and watched as the vibrant elements of the city of man, the corporatized
entityship all wrapped in blankets of civilization, heated and then cooled. The
ways of man en masse expanded and contracted through several decades as the old
Alchemist watched, illustrating in that way the volatility intrinsic to
civilization's foundation. He studied the
coagulating mass closely.

He saw that the village's formula had failed. Misery
and mirth marked the mane of man, and he roared throughout the forest whenever
he left the safety of the city walls. Soon enough, he saw that unnatural
smokes rose above the entity's countenance, which knew not the forest's solitary
inhabitant. Synthetic situations surfaced. The tone of it's civil sheen was
tense and stressed. Unhappiness abounded, fear was in and upon everyone.

"Odd", thought the old alchemist to himself as he pulled
thoughtfully at his long beard, "the village-maker must have
omitted from his formula the salt of the earth". By the stars - the formula
is incomplete. I must find some way to infuse the missing human salt...

Whereupon he pitched a pinch upon the pile of lifeless metals and sent his
voice like fire in the firmaments above the village until it gasped and grasped his breath, and
came to life, a molten instrument of his heart. His billows like a wind fed to
fire the earth's air as fluid life divined the water from his sweat, leaving to
the melt's molten glowing egg of liquid metal the reagent salt.

And he dissolved the village by sending embers of fire into the minds of the
village throngs, who uproared smartly in taking it's hot light after having
simmered so long in darkness. The process was begun. Billow pumps and breath in
a translucent tube. The electrified fire ran quickly through the village
people's minds, heated by and heating in return the metallic beams of the
village structure, which soon enough glowed red before their melting.

In candlelight he brought the charcoal rod close to the flame, preparing it
by tipping it red where it rested by the fire. He cast from his fingers across
the hulk of the village structure a granulated flux which loosened the
crucible's walls to the mass at his focus. He reached for a gray powder and
sprinkled it too upon the work, all the while pumping his billow with a foot. He
peered directly at the work and watched it's slump begin. It resisted mightily
before yielding as he knew it finally would, it's form folding to gravity's gate
as fate foretold by signet.

Finally the melting began to liquify, and the metal pooled with a bright,
glowing, shimmery surface on which floated round film-spots of translucent flux.
He brought the black charcoal rod down into the bubble of the wet metal at it's
farthest side, opposite his eyes. He carefully drew the rod's tip in a
half-circle within the metal's globular globe, then withdrew the tip to the air
above the melt.

Next he inserted the tip again at the top-center edge of the melt and dragged
a stir, starting the tracing of a complete circle below the half-circle,
downward and over and upward to meet finally at it's beginning point. Again he
withdrew the rod into the air. Then his rod entered the melt from top center and
made the sign of the cross, and withdrew to return with the sign of Mercury on
the right arm of the cross. At the bottom of the cross's leg he formed a
pyramid's triangle, into which he put the symbol of the caduceus. Next he traced
the sign of quicksilver at the left arm of the cross.

His closeness to the work had warmed his old face, and once again his brow
produced it's sweat. Feeling it pool, and knowing that the melt was now at
temperature, he leaned forward even closer to the glowing melt and saw that the
sun and the moon were joined in dance, the four elements which junctured as the
four arms of the cross intersected were combined with a dot of conjoinment's
ether. The quicksilver ran every line in the symbol instantly and perpetually, a
fluid, primitive neon pattern. As his symbol appeared to be ready, he quietly spoke
seven words which he would not permit to be repeated, let fall into the center
of the sunsign his sweatlet of human salt, and then stirred the metallic
universe rapidly, in circles clockwise, to erase his magic sign. His foot
stopped pumping his billow and he leaned back and upright again, moving his
tired shoulders high in a stretch, wagging his long shaggy hair. He retired from
the heat of his work and stepped outside under cicada song and starshine.

A cool breeze brought to his face the scent of hope. It was encased in the
sense of knowing he had given the best of himself into the work. He smiled as
his eyes scanned the night's tree-tops. Beyond those trees lay the village which
would conquer the world, now but a fortnight removed from it's own demise and
distant rebirth.

"Vision displaces knowledge...." he mused in a satisfied whisper, as he
lifted his eyes to the encouraging stars and the light pooled in a chalice moon.